Low Tide

Our faculty hosted a dinner last evening for our graduates and their families. There were wonderful tributes given by husbands, mothers, and sisters--and plenty of tears to go around. We faculty mingled. It was one of the few times I haven't wanted to drop out of sight when faced with such a task. Most of the students were known to me and seeing them with their families created the context that made sense of many things.

There was a slide presentation with pictures of all sorts of funny scenes. People loved it.

Then I sang.

It's not that I was nervous, because I rarely get nervous when I sing. The students didn't know I could sing but they had heard I knew how to sing, yada yada. It just happened that I was wearing a pair of pantyhose that I picked up on a sale table. The color was perfect, there was no reinforced toe thickness to show through my open-toed shoes, and they were control top. By all counts, they should have been the perfect accompaniament to my outfit.

When I pulled them on, they felt odd. They fit oddly around the waist and seemed to be lacking in elasticity or something. I gave them an extra tug to keep them in the right place. It is not unusual to have pantyhose feel catywhompus, and these were no exception. At least I hadn't pulled on them so hard that my fingers went right through them.

By the time I got to the dinner venue, the pantyhose had rolled down to my hip bones. Getting out of the car, I tried serreptitiously to yank them back up while greeting students coming alongside the back of the car. "Oh, hi Marilyn!" I yelled, hauling up the waistband as I held my very large purse in front of my stomach. "Did you see the sign at the front door?" I asked. They turned to look and I dropped my purse on the front seat of the car. With both hands I pulled on the waistband while they looked confusedly toward the building, the opposite direction.

In the door I went, and straight to the ladies room. By this time, my pantyhose were not only starting to slide to parts unknown, but so was everything else. A few moments of adjusting and pulling in the bathroom stall restored order down below. Back out into the auditorium I went, clutching my purse over my errant waistband.

It only seemed appropriate that I move from table to table, greeting family members and hugging students. Every step, every grasp, every moment, my pantyhose slid a bit farther down. One girl leaped out of her chair and clasped me to her for some minutes, whispering her thanks to me for helping her get through her studies. I was focusing on something sliding down over my bottom at that moment. I only hope that when she let go of me and looked into my face, she saw compassion and warmth, and not the panic and horror that I was feeling about my impending humiliation.

Feeling as though I should walk knock-kneed, so as to keep my pantyhose from rolling clear to my ankles, I minced back over to the table where I was to sit. As I smoothed my dress over my lap, a rolled up linear wad of cloth was apparent. I scooted my chair closer to the table, hoping that the tablecloth would cover it. I couldn't exactly eat with one hand doing a tug-of-war, but God forbid if it rolled any lower. I had to get up in front and sing at some point!

As the program progressed, we heard from string players, a poet, and the chair of the department handed out awards. Every few minutes, while people were clapping and looking elsewhere, the pantyhose got another tug northward. By the time our table was dismissed to go to the buffet line, I had been able to rearrange things to almost normal. That was a major victory. Perhaps it would be over.

Reaching for the salad at the buffet, it all started to slide again. What in the world did I have on down there? I managed to get back to the table and got started on my lassagna. It was good food, good conversation, good feelings. I forgot all about my little secret. Then my student announced that I would be singing for them.

Standing up was agony, because what had been at the cusp of trouble immediately became a bad situation. Walking up to the front of the room, everything shifted about 10 inches lower. I felt like I was in slow motion. The words of the song, Amazing Grace, came out of my mouth. I could look out into the crowd and see familiar faces, but I couldn't really focus on much. Something was sliding down over my bottom again, I realized with a sickening pang. All of it was sliding down, down, down. I wondered if my pantyhose would start to sag and wrinkle around my knees. Fortunately, my dress came to just below my knees and it wasn't clingy. But it wouldn't keep people from seeing the tide going out. Rolled into my pantyhose was the elastic from my underwear, and in one undulating movement, all was on the skids. Feeling drafty where I typically didn't feel a draft, I realized that there was potential that these good folks would know more about me than any of them cared to know in about five minutes if I stayed up front.

I'm not sure how I got through that song, but I did. Mincing back to my seat, all that mattered was that I could get there, and then to the bathroom to put everything in place once again. Why was this happening? I'd never had such a defective pair of pantyhose.

Long story short, I never did manage to get into the bathroom afterward, but was carried along with the crowd out to my car. I found that by taking large steps I could prevent everything from rolling any further down my thighs, which was where things were at this point. I just about made it to my car, feeling like a goose-stepping woman on a mission, when one little student came rushing toward me. "Thank you doct, for the flowers!" he said, hugging me. Something deep in my layers of clothing went ping! as I reached for him. I suddenly felt breezy under my dress in an alarming way. Oh Lord, don't let me be humiliated right here. It was a brief moment, and I was quickly in the car, driving away. Every bit of decency I had was rolled together and clung to me about six inches above my knees. I had made it to the car just in time.

As I pulled up into the driveway, Sam was just taking a load of clothes out of the drier. I drove inside and closed the garage door immediately. "Why did you do that?" he asked, clearly irritated that he'd have to climb around the car with the clothes basket to get into the house.
Getting out of the car, I turned my back to him and lifted up my dress. "That's why."
The moon rose early that night, in the garage on Butterland Avenue. No layer of "Town Taupe" could be seen.